Off With Their Heads!

If a candidate can’t generate real excitement at his campaign rallies, he’s got a big problem. If he’s also rich, he can simply buy it.

So I conclude from reports that Kerry events are increasingly becoming stage-managed rallies, with imported supporters. At the aforementioned events in Michigan and Ohio, they bused in canned heat from as far as 150 miles away to augment bomb-scare attendance levels. And as one might expect of rich libs, the Kerryites are banking on Big Labor to help in this effort, and pick up the tab for them. Which they’re more than willing to do, since they’ll simply pass the cost along to their dues-paying members, nearly half of which won’t vote for the Boston Balker, and their employers, whom he plans to pillage. Case in point: one attendee at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Monday, she was given part of the day off with pay from her union job to attend.

Recall Mr. French’s college football gaffe cited above, and this tidbit makes it even worse: Kerry got booed off the stage by a crowd he bought & paid for.

Perhaps this explains his sudden stridency on the stump.

“After scooting across Lake Michigan by high-speed ferry, Democrat John Kerry staged a large, raucous rally along the Milwaukee River Monday night, deriding President Bush's leadership in the war on terrorism and portraying the election as an all-or-nothing pivot point in the nation's future,” reports today’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Actually, they’re leaving out something noteworthy from that amphibious operation. Take a look at the pic in the MJ-S article. Fox News Channel newscaster Carl Cameron made the astute observation this morning that Kerry appeared to be trying to recreate the visual of Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic where he’s at the bow of the doomed cruise ship bellowing, “I’m the king of the world!!!!!” while Teraaaaaaaayza, stood behind him in Kate Winslet’s role. Although I tend to think that Mrs. Heinz, as she prefers to be known, was simply using her husband for a windshield. Still, for a campaign as heavily scripted as this one, one marvels that they can keep making this sort of mistake.

Anyway, once he got to the other side, he apparently snapped – which probably only served to make him look alive for a change.

’Everything is at stake!’ Kerry told thousands of supporters who packed into Pere Marquette Park and lined the opposite side of the river. ‘Jobs! Health care! Education! Civil liberties! Civil rights! The Constitution! Social Security! Medicare! Our children! The environment! Our future! All of it is on the line!!!.’

Only thing missing was a Howie Dean scream.

I’m sorry, folks, but this is either Kerry lapsing into channeling Dr. Demented again, or a man who doesn’t feel nearly as confident about his chances in November as his party’s propagandists are attempting to spin.

Even more revealing was his thin-skinnedness when directly confronted with good, old-fashioned political dissent.

The high-stakes intensity of the campaign could also be seen Monday in noisy confrontations between Kerry and Bush supporters and the use of bullhorns and air horns by a small group of Bush supporters to try to disrupt the speeches, prompting Kerry and his wife to respond to what the candidate termed ‘goons.’

While she was introducing her husband, Teresa Heinz Kerry referred to the group's audible call for ‘Four more years.’

Said Heinz Kerry, "They want four more years of hell."

And you still wonder why they want to get this Lovie Howell reject under wraps?

Kerry also responded to the pro-Bush chanters, saying they wanted to ‘drown people out’ with their megaphones.

"We don't want to be drowned out," Kerry said. ‘I want to thank George Bush for sending the goons here tonight to excite us to do a little more work! Thank you!’

One’s first instinct is to dismiss this bit of ad libbing as mere hyperbole. But this is John “God” Kerry we’re talking about, and he’s the nominee of a party that has been driven collectively insane by its Bushophobic paranoia. So it can almost be taken for granted that Brah-Man really believes it.

I only wish the Bush-Cheney campaign was nearly that well organized, motivated, and aggressive. If it was, Kerry wouldn’t have any victory chances to be nervous about.